


Routine Maintenance

by Carbynn



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Other, Pre-Slash, Role Reversal, nothing inappropriate but roy can't control his baby brain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-21 16:11:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13744581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carbynn/pseuds/Carbynn
Summary: Colonel Elric gives Roy some tips about automail maintenance and Roy realizes that maybe his stupid crush is a lot more stupid than he originally thought.





	Routine Maintenance

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone, back again with more bullshit that I shouldn't be writing but am so I can procrastinate from working on my real projects! 
> 
> This is just a little snippet from Iginita's AMAZING Reverse AU. Check out her art for it on Tumblr [HERE](https://kotosk.tumblr.com/tagged/reverse-au)

“Flame, my office,” Colonel Elric snapped as he breezed into the office, gold ponytail whipping behind him as he went, not bothering to stop on his way across the room to his own door.

“You’re late,” the lieutenant colonel called after him. “How are you late?  _ We left together! _ ” The only response he got from the colonel was a decisive snap of the door as it shut behind him, and the lieutenant colonel sighed wearily. “Well, go ahead, Roy.”

Roy was frozen where he stood. He’d barely even been in the colonel’s command for a week, hadn’t even been deployed in the field yet. He couldn’t imagine what he’d done to earn the colonel’s ire, and he couldn’t help the cold drip of terror that slid down his spine. What if it was Riza? What if someone had found out about the transmutation? He wasn’t sure he’d be able to stay composed if it came down to that.

He knew that the colonel and the lieutenant colonel knew what they’d done, and he knew that they’d done it themselves, and he’d thought there had been a sense of kinship there, a sense of understanding, but what if he’d been  _ wrong? _ He didn’t misread situations often but the Elric brothers were no easy read and Roy couldn’t be sure he hadn’t severely miscalculated their intentions with the information they had. Maybe it didn’t matter that Roy knew they’d done it, too. Probably, no one would even believe him. Automail wasn’t evidence, but Riza would be more than enough to damn him.

There was a sort of ache in his chest at the very idea of it that had nothing to do with Riza. Edward Elric, one of the youngest state alchemists in history, Hero of Ishval, People’s Alchemist, had always been something like an obsession. He was raw strength, power, an example of everything terrible that could be done with something like alchemy, but at the same time, an example of everything good that could be done with it, too. He was a dichotomy, a gray smear in a world that was sometimes too black and white, and the very idea of him had enchanted and enthralled Roy ever since the first newspaper articles had started appearing during the war. Meeting him, being put his command, had been like a dream come true. Roy had expected a lot of things, but he hadn’t expected him to be so  _ golden,  _ so compelling and just all around good-looking.

There was the tiniest chance that his infatuation had turned into something like a crush, and he was doing his best to ignore that inconvenient fact. He didn’t have time for crushes, especially not crushes on childhood heroes who didn’t fit into the mold he’d made for him. The image of Colonel Elric was compelling, sure, and no doubt impressive but the reality of him?

The reality of Edward Elric was a bit… different.

How would one even describe him? He was loud, brash, and completely unafraid to air his opinion on pretty much anything no matter how inappropriate the venue or the audience. He was foolhardy and reckless and generally vulgar with a cool and easy air of confidence that played to his show-offish and immodest nature, and none of that was anything like what Roy had spent years imagining.  He was like a whirlwind, like fire, and Roy knew more about fire than almost anyone.

Still, there was more to him than that, a deeper layer that Roy had yet to see, yet to explore, and had only seen hints of here and there in the way the rest of the team regarded him, in the way people spoke to and about him, and in the way he treated people. He couldn’t have gotten the name ‘The People’s Alchemist’ for no reason after all.

“You had better go on in,” Lieutenant Colonel Elric said, startling Roy out of his thoughts.

Roy steeled himself and nodded once, going purposefully for the inner door. Whatever it was, there was nothing he could do about it now so best to just get through it with as much dignity as possible.

All thoughts of dignity flew straight out the window as soon as the colonel’s door shut behind him.

“All right kid, pants off. Shirt too.”

Roy’s heart was in his throat and some horrific combination of hope, arousal, and terror beat through him like fever, and his face must have given it away because the colonel just rolled his eyes and scoffed.

“Get your head outta the gutter, I don’t run my command like that. I need to see your automail.”

“Why?” Roy asked, immediately on the defensive.

“‘Cause I can hear you creak when you walk. C’mon, off. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

As little as Roy wanted to show off the ugliest parts of himself to the colonel, he couldn’t really deny that it wasn’t like he didn’t know what he was hiding. He gritted his teeth and slipped out of his coat, slinging haphazardly at the couch before making quick work of his shirt and pants. He could feel the flush creeping over his face and he steadfastly refused to make eye-contact, but the colonel didn’t seem to be paying any attention to his relative nakedness. Instead his eyes were narrowed in on his automail leg and he stood staring at it for a moment before he swept his arm across his desktop to clear a space on the side of it and rolled his office chair around. “Sit,” he said, pointing to the space he’d cleared as he took a seat in the office chair.

Roy hesitated for a moment before doing what he was told and climbing onto the desk in front of the colonel, keeping his eyes focused firmly on the wall behind him.

As soon as Roy was situated, the colonel seized his automail and dragged it into his lap, poking and prodding at the screws and the seams.

“Kid, where the _ fuck _ did you get this?”

“It’s-”

“Is this  _ iron _ ? It’s fucking rusting! Did you try to make this yourself? Kid, I gotta tell you, this is the worst thing I’ve ever  _ seen _ .”

Roy’s flush was moving from embarrassment to rage. He yanked his leg out of the colonel’s lap and turned to slide off the desk. He didn’t need to be insulted that way. He’d worked  _ hard _ for that automail, worked himself half to death for it in bad, immobile prosthetics doing hard, painful work until he’d scraped together enough money because he  _ had _ to have automail, had to have the mobility to travel and work and fight so he could get Riza her body back, and just who did the colonel think he was? He didn’t know the first thing about it.

The colonel stood up and caught him by the shoulders before he managed to get away, much to Roy’s chagrin. “Hey, cool it. I’m not trying to be a dick, but this is serious shit. Do you know how much of a strain automail puts on your body? Even good automail is a bitch and a half but  _ bad _ automail can fuckin’ kill you.”

Roy hadn’t know that. He settled a little, crossing his arms, one metal and one flesh, over his chest and finally, reluctantly, met the colonel’s eye. “How can automail kill you? It’s just body parts.”

“It’s hooked into your nervous system,” the colonel explained, reaching behind the desk to pull out a little can of what looked like machine oil before settling back in the chair and taking Roy’s leg again. “Mismatched nerve connections can fuck with your brain. At best, your automail doesn’t work the way it should. At worst, it can trigger seizures and blackouts. You really don’t want to mess with that. Bad maintenance can make the limbs put too much strain on your system too. Have you been oiling this thing at all?”

“Um.” No one had told Roy anything about oiling. He thought the gears just kind of… moved.

“Fuck’s sake, no wonder you’re creaking. You  _ can’t _ get lazy with this, especially not when you’ve got something like this hanging off you. You gotta keep it oiled up until you get something better. When the gears jam, it puts more strain on your nerves to keep the joints moving. I’m surprised you’re not limping.”

Roy didn’t know how to tell the colonel that he wouldn’t be getting anything better anytime soon, wouldn’t be getting anything better  _ ever _ , probably. He’d nearly killed himself working to pay for the automail he had, there was no way he’d ever be able to shell out for the same quality of machinery that the colonel and the lieutenant colonel had. Restoring his body was the only choice he had and even if he couldn’t, he’d gladly bear the burden of dangerous automail for Riza’s sake.

“I can get you in contact with my friend Winry and see what we can do about getting you an upgrade. Al an’ I used to work with her in her granny’s automail shop before we got drafted. She does great work.”

“That’s fine,” Roy said immediately. “You don’t have to. I can manage with this, it’s not that bad.”

“Kid,” the colonel said, exasperation leaking into his tone. “I don’t know if you’re tryin’ to be noble or what, but--”

“I can’t afford better automail,” Roy muttered, cutting him off before he could say anything else and make it worse. “This is the best I can do, and it’s fine. I can make do. I haven’t had blackouts or anything like that and my back barely even hurts.” Not entirely true, but it wasn’t like he could do anything about it so why make it seem worse?

The colonel, however, only waved his hand. “Winry’ll cut you a deal. Whatever she can’t afford to comp you can come out of either the military health budget or, if worse comes to worse, you have your research grant but you can bet your ass I’ll fight for these fucks to pay for it. If they want to send you out to fight like a goddamn adult then they’re gonna fuckin’ take care of you.” The conviction in his voice was a little bit startling and all at once Roy’s chest tightened and he was struggling to keep breathing.

It wasn’t that no one had ever offered to help him before. He’d gotten more help than he’d known what to do with after the transmutation and he knew just how lucky he was that things were the way they were now even if everything was horribly backwards and broken and wrong. It’s just that he didn’t expect someone like the colonel to ever care that much about someone like him.

“Thank you,” he managed, and if it came out a little choked then he hoped the colonel would be too good to mention it.

“Hey, no problem.” The colonel wrapped his knuckles on the side of Roy’s metal leg. “Let’s say we get this sorted out, all right? D’you trust me?”

“Yes,” Roy said immediately, firmly, before he even had to think about it, happy to set aside the turmoil of emotion that had risen up in him at the concept of the colonel’s generosity.

The colonel nodded and clapped, bringing his hands down on Roy’s leg. The jolt of the transmutation shot through the remainder of his thigh and his shoulder, zinging through his nerve endings like the shock of automail reattachment but with something softer on its heels.

The rust rose out of the cracks and crevices of his automail and balled up before landing on the floor with a quiet, metallic clang and the colonel surveyed his work with a quiet sort of satisfaction. “Feel better?”

It took Roy a moment to regain his breath after the last little sparks of the transmutation filtered from his body. He gave his shoulder a little roll and, to his surprise, he found that the action wasn’t as difficult as he was used to it being. “Much better, thank you.”

“Wait ‘till I get you oiled up, then,” the colonel said, cracking a smile, and Roy’s breath was knocked right back out of him.

Maybe there was more to that crush than he’d realized.

The colonel, unaware of Roy’s inner turmoil, had picked up the little oil can and had slid his hands down to Roy’s metal ankle. He was so fixated on the movement of his hands against the joint that it took him a moment to realize the colonel was speaking again.

“...the screws. Mostly, you just need to focus on the joints and anywhere you might get friction from metal rubbing against metal. Ideally, there’ll be a mechanism that allows the oil to carry through the gears inside the automail starting from the joint but I have no idea what kind of mess you’re dragging around so there’s a chance the gears won’t get any oil at all, and since you’ve had it so long already, I’d say your days with this set are probably numbered before you start encountering some catastrophic failures.”

“Catastrophic failures?” Roy’d had enough catastrophic failures to last him a lifetime.

“Yep.” The colonel had moved up to Roy’s knee and was steadily working the spout of the can across the crease of the metal with a practiced hand. “It could stop working all together, and that’s the best case scenario. You don’t want to start popping connections that are hard-wired into your nerves, believe me. That’s a kind of pain I wouldn’t wish on my worst fuckin’ enemy.” The knee was done and the colonel’s hands slid up Roy’s thigh without preamble and one hand planted itself firmly on the top of the actual flesh that remained, fingers just inches away from the heat between Roy’s legs.

He was dying, he was absolutely sure of it. The colonel’s hand was warm and heavy against his skin and Roy’s guts were squirming with something hot and unfamiliar and he realized with dawning horror that he  _ wanted _ the colonel. Somehow his stupid, idiot crush had settled into something a little sharper and a little worse.

“You want to make sure you oil the port, too,” he was saying, completely unaware (and wasn’t  _ that _ a small mercy,) of Roy’s internal chaos. “If you don’t, you run the risk of the metal of the port and the limb joining. Detachment’s enough of a bitch without having to drag a crowbar into it.”

Roy could only nod and bite the inside of his cheek until the colonel’s hand came away and the oil can was being roughly pressed into his own flesh hand. “Now do your arm.”

Roy’s fingers closed around the can and yanked it free of the colonel’s almost automatically. He was sure his hand was trembling as he began to carefully apply the oil to the joints of his fingers but he was grateful for a distraction, for something with which to occupy his mind long enough to will his body into something like calm. By the time he made it to his shoulder, his hand was steady and his heart had stopped trying to pound its way through his ribs.

He could feel the colonel’s eyes on him as he pulled the can away and rolled his shoulder to work the oil through. It felt better already, he had to admit. The dragging movements weren’t nearly so pronounced and it almost,  _ almost _ felt halfway like something normal.

“Better?”

Roy nodded, folding his hands, metal and flesh, back in his lap, cradling the oil can. “How often do I need to do this?”

“Every morning when you wake up. Before bed works too, but you’ll stain the shit outta your sheets.” The colonel pushed Roy’s leg off of his lap and pushed his chair back. “After you shower, too. Water and automail don’t mix, especially that iron you’ve got on. You’re gonna have to oil the shit out of it to stop it from rusting again before Winry gets her hands on you. Keep the can, and let me know when you run out. Hopefully it won’t take too long to get you sorted but you can’t let it get that bad again. I’d rather take the oil expense out of the office budget than let you creak around here like an old barn door.”

“Um, thank you,” Roy said, because he wasn’t sure what else there was  _ to _ say. Certainly not any of the other things that were floating around in his mind. That wouldn’t do  _ at all _ .

The Colonel just waved a hand dismissively and rolled himself back around behind the desk. “I’ll let you know when Winry’ll be in town. She’ll need to take measurements and then it’ll probably take her a few days to get something made up for you. With any luck, your ports will be serviceable at least. They seem pretty solid.” He made a grab for the first stack of paperwork his hand encountered and dragged it in front of himself before looking back up at Roy, still perched on the edge of his desk. “You plannin’ on putting your fuckin’ clothes back on?”

“Right, sorry.” Roy slid off the desk in one smooth movement, surprised by the ease with which his leg complied with his desires. He collected his clothes and quickly re-dressed with his back to the colonel to hide the flush that he could feel creeping across his face and chest at the idea of being watched.

He dressed as quickly as he could manage, but the oil on his metal fingers made the already difficult task of doing up the clasp on his jacket even worse than usual. He was intent on the struggle and didn’t hear the slide of the colonel’s chair or the soft bootsteps crossing the floor. It was only when the metal hand settled on his shoulder, startling him, that he realized the man had moved.

The colonel turned him gently and pushed Roy’s hands out of the way before making quick work of the clasp himself. He could feel the heat of the colonel’s flesh hand through the thin material of his shirt and his heart jumped right back into his throat.

“Careful with those finger joints, you can over-do it if you aren’t careful.” The colonel smoothed down the jacket over his chest and Roy thought there was a very good chance that all of the oxygen had actually fled from his lungs, and then he was stepping back and returning to his desk.

Roy was frozen with shock for a long minute before he managed to grasp at the last shreds of his composure and pull himself back together. “Um. Uh, thanks,” he managed. “Do you, um, was that all, Sir?”

The Colonel had returned to the stack of paperwork in front of him and only grunted in response. Roy pulled his coat off of the sofa where he’d tossed and bundled himself back into it. It was comforting, like a shield, almost, from the world and everything that world made him feel.

He hazarded a glance back at the Colonel as he made for the door. His face was obscured by the fall of his golden bangs in his face and he looked to be engrossed in his work, although Roy had a sneaking suspicion he was only minutes away from attempting a poor rendition of a hand-drawn portrait of the entire team if past experience was any indication. Roy’s chest was tight and he wasn’t sure he could draw a breath even if he wanted to.

If there was any question before, there certainly wasn’t one now. Roy was absolutely  _ lost. _

He did his best to banish it from his mind as he pushed through the door back into the outer office. He didn’t have time for a crush. He didn’t have time for anything that didn’t guide him towards his goal, not until Riza had her body back. There was still too much work to be done.

**Author's Note:**

> HEY ALSO SPEAKING OF IGINITA!! Check out the art she did for this fic [HERE!](https://kotosk.tumblr.com/post/171498946067/for-carbynn-s-glorious-fic-even-if-roy-did) I am truly #blessed.


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